Yep, I’m aware that I haven’t written for two months. That little nagging voice in the back of my head wouldn’t let me forget it. As much as I would love to be disciplined enough to be a daily (or at least multi-week) blogger, I had to accept long ago that it just wasn’t going to happen. Something had to give, y’know? And the truth is, I’m not that interesting. I run out of things to talk about. I don’t have time to scour the internet for interesting things, even the things I love to talk about. During the school year, the majority of my time is spent on school and kids and all the chaos that goes along with school and kids. When I’m not dealing with the chaos of school and kids, I’m enjoying a leisurely bath. Like I said, something had to give, and I wasn’t going to give up my baths. After all … blogging while in the bath might prove to be a bit, ah, dangerous.

My part of Iowa is currently under a Winter Storm Warning. The Weather Channel has named this one Saturn. Their storm-naming trend has me chuckling in a way; having lived in the Midwest all my life, I know that winter storms are anything but an oddity in these parts. They happen pretty regularly, whether it involves snow, ice, or a mixture. The Weather Channel has already come up with some awesome names this year — Thor, Gandolph, etc. — but I know that eventually they’re going to run out of cool names and they’ll be relegated to normal names like Bob and Frank and Sharon. In fact, giving winter storms these comic book-like names suggests that their appearance is an oddity; a supernatural event that deserves a grand name. In reality, it’s snow. We get it all the time here in the Midwest. The last three Christmases have involved blizzards. Snow is about as odd as seeing a cornfield as I drive down the highway.

But hey — Winter Storm Saturn is here and I’m sure it will run circles around the other storms (punny, I know). Having just enjoyed a snow day last week, I think I’ll take another. Keep ’em coming until spring break, and then I’ll burst into tears because I realize that we’ll be going to school until July.

Not much happening in the Retro Find department, I hate to say. My youngest son and I stopped by the local antique store a couple weeks ago. I brought him in there last year but got the feeling that he was not very impressed. This year, I tried again, and I think I’ve made a little convert out of my 8-year old. He eagerly went into the store with me and started puttering around, picking up this and that and asking me questions about the items he found. I quickly discovered the value of having a short 8-year old in the store with me; whatever I could not see of the stacks of stuff piled under the tables, my son was sure to see something cool. He found three little framed pictures with frames made in Italy; the pictures are nondescript but the frames were charming. He found two matching ones and then pulled out another one with a different frame pattern, but the three went together so well that we bought them all. He found a hotel bell that he begged me to have, and wanting to encourage his treasure hunt, I obliged, knowing that I would be sentencing myself to weeks and months of hearing DING! repeated constantly. However, I drew the line at the “dogs playing poker” tapestry. He thought it was cool, and I …. did not. I did find a neat little wall-hanging lamp that has a total Art Deco metal edging on it. I bought it thinking that I could hang it over my bed as a reading lamp — forgetting, of course, that my bed has a WINDOW above it. So the lamp got stashed on a shelf until I can find a suitable place for it.

Needless to say, I think I’ve converted my youngest son into an antique hunter. My oldest son, however, still rolls his eyes and says, “Mom, why do you have to fill our house with 50’s stuff? Why can’t we have NICE stuff?”